Nona has only been in her body for six months. Well, it’s not really her body. She lives with her little family, Phyrra, Camilla, and Palamedes and they are trying to help her work out who she actually is. They go to work; she goes to school. A refugee crisis spurned on by decades and decades of war and a solar event make the city they live turbulent and tense. A monstrous blue sphere has appeared in the sky and threatens to kill them all. The story follows Nona and her little family while they solve the mystery of Nona and deal with the ongoing crises around them.

I liked this book, but perhaps not as much as the previous two books. Nona is childlike and sweet and she foreshadows terrible things to come in the next book. I enjoyed the relationships between the main cast of characters and was happy to see returns from previous books in the series. Meh. If this were a standalone, I might not recommend it. But as part of the series, it’s fine. Where the main character of Gideon the Ninth was full of bravado and humor and the main character of Harrow the Ninth was stubborn and (maybe?) insane, Nona is fierce and sweet and that was an interesting departure from previous novels.

This was a fine third installment, but I look forward to the next one.